kallisti

She was having the dream again.

It always started the same: a room with marble floors of alternating crimson and ivory squares that supported enormous columns which stretched to the open sky. No walls, no ceiling... only the distant echoes of a grand feast with her on the outside, looking in. At no time could she ever recall feeling such loneliness. Starting in the pit of her stomach, it rose and gave birth to anger.

"How dare they. They will pay."

Her voice... but not, as if she were listening to some sinister recording.

Next came a gilded flash. A golden sphere cradled in unearthly pale palms preceded a whispered word - kallisti - before scattering like the sand on the wind. In her hands she found a sword instead.

Insatiable hunger followed, drove her mad and to the battlefields with whoops and hollers in a foreign tongue that flowed from her own. Floors morphed from polished stone to arid land covered in sun-bleached bone and ruby blood. The latter swirled around her ankles, staining the hem of gray robes before slipping serpentine up her legs, around her torso, shoulders, neck then filled her mouth with its coppery taste. Still the craving did not wane. More gore. More violence. More death...

Brenna awoke screaming.

Covered in sweat, she jolted herself awake; her heart thumping wildly in her chest as she fought back the images and the feelings that came with them. She'd suffered these dreams as long as she could remember; these... Night Terrors. Only, none of the literature Brenna had read ever mentioned the one symptom she was left with even after the visions had faded...

Arousal.

She groaned into her pillow and groped blindly for the lamp. Unfamiliar bedrooms always made for trouble and her palm connected with the hard surface of a book instead of the side table as she'd expected. The journal was yanked into her lap as she hauled herself into a sitting position and flipped on a lamp. Green eyes stared for a long time at the volume while she pondered just how it had made it's way from out of sight and out of mind back onto her night stand. Housekeeping, probably. Even so... there was no harm, here, alone in the semi-darkness in giving in.

"Fine, you want me to write? I'll write," she hissed at the book before flipping it open and stabbing a page with her pen.

Fucking dream woke me up again. It was more realistic intense this time, too. I'm not quite sure how this works and I'm not entirely convinced this isn't still some bizarre trick of the fairies or that I've gone nutters but... has anyone (assuming there are 'anyones' out there) had any luck with medication or therapy in taming these nightmares? My mum attempted to drag me in to a specialist once but I fought her the whole way. Sort of regretting it now, though... Also, how do you fall back to sleep afterward?

Brenna frowned at the journal, running her fingers over the name plate absently. Well, it was done but in the end it had done nothing for her other problem. A little sigh and she tossed the book onto the bed, opting for a shower, even if it was some ungodly hour of the morning. Might as well make do with the detachable shower head while she could.

Brenna knew hotel rooms were supposed to come complete with one of those Bibles no one read stuffed in a drawer but a journal carrying her name and some Greek scribbling on the cover was a different story. Especially when she found it poking out from beneath a corner of her pillow like if were some schoolgirl's diary.

The woman scowled at the book and carefully, as one handling a bomb, looked over every inch of it. Brenna's frown deepened when she discovered it was used. Were it not for the inscription in the front, she'd have thought it nothing more than a souvenir left behind by a previous occupant but as it were, her name alone kept Brenna from tossing it straight into the rubbish bin. Instead, she studied it closer, hoping to discover it's origin.


There was a mishmash of different writing styles, each obviously created by a different hand. Spooks, perhaps. Wonderful. As if her homeland didn't have enough of those; now they were following her like a bean sidhe for time away. Or, more realistically, it had to be some kind of joke; a prank some hotel workers set up... That was it. A bellhop or two decided to have a little fun with some of the foreigners and she'd be damned if she gave them the satisfaction of acknowledging the fact that they had riled her...

But what if it really was the work of the little people? Ignoring them and the journal could be hazardous...

"Oh, bugger that," Brenna hissed to herself then pulled out the chair of the tiny desk in her room and began to write.

While it would please me greatly to know that this book is some kind of oddly disguised telegraph system that I've accidentally wired into and not possessed by a few ghosts or fae, I am on holiday and frankly, don't give two shites. Pretty journal; I'll have it exorcised by Father McCaffery back home need be but for right now I'm not wasting my time sitting around, conversing with things from another world while wondering if I'm gone 'round the bend finally. My dreams are none of your business - whoever you are. Thanks for the scratch pad but it's going to be spending the remainder of my time in Athens right where I found it.

A quick flick of her wrist and the woman flipped the book shut with a huff. That should do it. Whatever spirits there were, hopefully they'd be trapped inside while she spent the rest of her time in peace. Brenna gave a satisfied nod to her reflection, steeling her will then stood and moved back to the bed. One long, last gaze swept over the journal before she tucked it under the pillow. Out of sight, out of mind... and hopefully out of the way of whatever harm the wee folk could cook up.